Banff National Park Hiking Trails

Banff National Park, in the northern Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada, offers numerous hiking opportunities. Trails throughout the park will take you to mountain lakes, ice fields and mountain summits. Wildlife you may see on your hike includes moose, mule deer, caribou, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, bison, marmots, wolves and bears. Four sections of the park offer differing scenic features and physical challenges.

Banff

Four hikes in the Banff area of the park offer especially challenging adventures. Aylmer Pass, a 13-kilometer trail, rises 2,285 meters up steep gradients. The Aylmer Lookout trail branches from the Aylmer Pass trail and offers a scenic overlook of the area. Cascade Amphitheatre is an eight-kilometer path that typically takes six hours to complete. The trail leads north across Forty Mile Creek and along mountainous terrain. The Cory Pass Loop is the most challenging hike in the park. Navigational skills and a strong hiking ability are necessary attributes if you plan to attempt this 13-kilometer loop around Mount Edith.

Castle Junction

Castle Junction offers hikes that are challenging and scenic. The Healy Pass trail at the end of Sunshine Road follows Healy Creek 655 meters up during a nine-kilometer hike. For a more difficult pass hike, you can take on Harvey Pass, which rises 1,035 meters over 10 kilometers. This route requires navigational skills because parts of the hike are on unmarked trails. Lake and waterfall hikes are abundant in the Castle Junction area as well, although they are typically short.

Lake Louise and Moraine Lake

The areas surrounding Lake Louise and Moraine Lake offer some of most abundant hiking opportunities in the park. Day hikes such as Boulder Pass, the Plain of Six Glaciers, the Bow River Loop and several paths around Lake Louise are less challenging and more scenic adventures. For more adventurous hikes in the area, consider climbing Fairview Mountain, a 10,010-meter elevation gain over 4.5 kilometers, or following one of three long valley hikes, along which you can look up at the peaks above.

Icefields Parkway

In addition to the six challenging hikes through the passes in the Icefields, you can hike to one of the lakes. Helen Lake is a four-hour trip across glacier landscapes. From Helen Lake you can continue to Dolomite Pass. The hike is nine kilometers from the Helen Lake trailhead and passes both Helen and Katherine lakes on the way to the summit of Dolomite Pass, three kilometers past Katherine Lake.

Safety in the Park

Banff National Park is a wilderness. Take precautions for your safety, including watching for falling rocks, staying away from rocky edges, researching your trip before going to avoid becoming lost, taking supplies such as food, water, clothes and rain gear and knowing how to stay safe among wildlife. Bears, moose, elk, wolves and other wildlife can pose a threat to your safety. Keep your distance from animals and be aware of your surroundings.